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Attractions and museums

Designed by PJH Cuypers and opened in 1885, the Rijksmuseum holds the country's largest collection of art and artefacts, including 40 Rembrandts and four Vermeers. After a decade-long closure, it's currently basking in the favourable response to a multimillion...

Attractions and museums

The Stedelijk Museum, with its incredibe bath-shaped extension, is Amsterdam's go-to institution for modern and contemporary art, with an extraordinary pre-war collection that includes works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse and Chagall, plus a collection...

Nightlife venues

Critics' choice

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The entertainment at Casa Rosso leaves nothing to the imagination: onstage are striptease girls and couples having full-on sex, and there’s a soft-core S&M performance thrown in for good measure. A recent attempt to drag things out of the gutter with...

Time Out features

Nightlife venues

Critics' choice

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Improbably dexterous female genitalia can be seen performing night after night – and, as the central part of their belief-beggaring act, spitting out an average of 15kg (33lbs) of fruit every evening. For €50 you get one hour to drink all you want but...

Shops

This fascinating collage of colour is the world's only floating flower market, with 15 florists and garden shops (although many also hawk cheesy souvenirs these days) permanently ensconced on barges along the southern side of Singel. The plants and flowers...

Coffeeshops

Run by two blokes living the modern American dream: get the f*@k out of America. They did so by opening this stellar coffeeshop, which offers some of the best weed and hash on the planet (try the Bubble Gum or Grey Mist Crystals). Also on offer are large...

Bars and pubs

Jordaan

Rating: 5/5

Critics' choice

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Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah: that's how it goes at this salt-of-the-earth bar. It's relatively quiet during the week, but weekends are real swinging singalong affairs, with revellers booming out tear-jerkers about love, sweat and the Westerkerk. All together...

Attractions and museums

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Prinsengracht 263 was the 17th-century canalside house where young Jewish girl Anne Frank and her family hid for two years during World War II. Today it's one of the most popular attractions in Amsterdam, with almost a million visitors a year.
Having...

Attractions and museums

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As well as the bright colours of his palette, Vincent van Gogh is known throughout the world for his productivity, and that's reflected in the 200 paintings and 500 drawings that form part of the permanent exhibition here. In addition to this collection,...

Attractions and museums

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This excellent photography museum, located in a renovated canal house, holds regular exhibitions of works by shutter-button maestros like August Sander as well as advertising from local agency KesselsKramer, and shows covering local themes such as Amsterdam...

Coffeeshops

One of the most easygoing coffeeshops around. This down-to-earth joint, with its understated decor and bare wooden tables, feels like a friendly corner café – with a kitchen to match. Substantial foodstuffs include toasties (served until 5pm) and shakes...

Restaurants and cafés, Global

Waterfront and North

Rating: 5/5

Expensive

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Huddled among unsightly industrial buildings on IJ waterfront, this refurbished warehouse in the north of Amsterdam possesses an air of effortless class. Its stripped back interior is elegantly shabby, with exposed rusty beams sitting comfortably alongside...

Clubs

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Amsterdam has never seen anything quite so luxuriously cosmopolitan as Jimmy Woo's. You, too, can marvel at the lounge area filled with a mixture of modern and antique furniture and then confirm for yourself the merits of its bootylicious light design...

Bars and pubs

Red Light District

Rating: 5/5

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It's standing room only at this historic tasting-house. Hidden behind the Krasnapolsky, unchanged since 1679, this has been a meeting place for Freemasons since the beginning; past visitors include Churchill and Chagall. The menu of liqueurs and jenevers...

Bars and pubs

Oost (East)

Rating: 5/5

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The famous tasting house at the base of the Gooyer windmill, where wares from award-winning local brewery 't IJ can be sampled. Inside is bare (still retaining the look of the municipal baths it once was) and seating minimal, so if weather permits, grab...

Pijp

Attractions

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Before noise pollution, it was said that if you could hear the bells of Westerkerk, built in 1631 by Hendrick de Keyser, you were in the Jordaan. These days, its freshly scrubbed and painted tower is just a good place from which to view its streets and...

Restaurants and cafés, Vegetarian

Old Side

Rating: 4/5

Budget

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Packed with kitsch and funky Finnish wallpaper - all of which, including wallpaper, is for sale - this little café serves up healthy juices and snacks all day long, plus vegetarian dinners based around couscous (from 6pm Thur-Sat).

Music

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A former dairy (the name translates as 'Milky Way'), the Melkweg acts as a home away from home for music of all styles, and thus draws a suitably eclectic crowd. Its two decent-sized concert halls offer a full programme year-round; after a refit in 2007,...

Cinemas

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Formerly the Filmmuseum, this is the most important centre for cinematography in the Netherlands, specialising in major retrospectives and edgier contemporary fare. There's a permanent exhibition space, as well as free-to-access education area, with 'EYE'pod...

Attractions and museums

Red Light District

Critics' choice

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While the Sex Museum benefits from its Damrak location in terms of passing trade, the Erotic Museum is in the more appropriate location: slap bang in the heart of the Red Light District. That’s not to say, though, that it’s any more authentic, or interesting....

Bars and pubs

Old Centre

Named after the exotic but tricksy Dutch courtesan, it’s appropriate that this new bar, restaurant and lounge has brought a touch of comfort and class to the Red Light District. Sympathetic lighting, retro furniture and an open kitchen serving dishes...

Restaurants and cafés, French

West of Centre

Rating: 4/5

Expensive

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This spacious monument to industry just west of the Jordaan pumped water from the coast's dunes for around a century. Now it pumps out honest Dutch and French dishes - from krokets to caviar - under a mammoth ceiling and floodlighting rescued from the...

Coffeeshops

Red Light District

With comfy couches and natural lighting via some well-placed windows, this cosy corner on the Nieuwmarkt is ideal for a mellow high. Delectable milkshakes, smoothies, space cookies and space truffles are also worth indulging in. But if harder and louder...

Attractions

Red Light District

Critics' choice

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The Oude Kerk began life as a simple wooden chapel in 1306, but today rates as Amsterdam’s most interesting church. It’s easy to imagine the Sunday Mass chaos during its heyday in the mid-1500s, when it had 38 altars, each with its own guild-sponsored...